


In Flanders Fields

by Miko



Series: We Shall Keep The Faith [17]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Desk Sex, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Open Relationships, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:37:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky knows he needs to resolve things between him and Nata before everything is damaged by the tension between them. All he wants is for the people he loves to be safe, happy, and together.</p><p>Why is that so difficult?</p><p> </p><p>This fic should be read in sequence with the rest of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Flanders Fields

Steve and Peggy were talking, but the sound of their voices was mostly registering only as a wash of white noise to Bucky. He wasn’t having an actively _bad_ night, not yet, but he was teetering right on the edge of one. Nothing could seem to hold his focus for long and he was annoyingly restless, prowling around Steve’s quarters in a useless sort of patrol.

The thought occurred to him that maybe he should check in with Wanda, but it had been nearly a month since he’d last needed her help and he was getting better and better at handling it himself. As she’d promised, the shift in the patterns of his thoughts became more entrenched in his mind every time she worked with him to clear his head. This wasn’t really bad enough to be worth breaking his current independent streak.

Probably he ought to warn Steve and Peggy, though. Assuming they hadn’t already figured it out just by watching him.

“Where’s Natasha?” Peggy asked, the sound of the other woman’s name catching Bucky’s attention abruptly and letting him concentrate on the conversation. “She’s not on a mission I don’t know about, is she? It’s getting late and we haven’t seen her all evening.”

“In her office, if she knows what’s good for her,” Steve said, his voice very dry. Bucky tilted his head at his friend, curious at the reaction, and Steve sighed. “She’s more than a week overdue on the quarterly reports _again_. I told her if I see her before they’re done, we’re gonna be having words.”

“She does detest the red tape, doesn’t she,” Peggy said, a smile tugging at her lips. “You realize I started giving you two advance deadlines for exactly that reason? She’s not actually overdue yet.”

“I know that, but she doesn’t, and we’re not going to tell her or you might as well not have bothered,” Steve retorted, but he was starting to smile as well. “At any rate, I doubt we’ll see her tonight. We could turn in, if you’re tired?”

“Not _that_ tired,” Peggy murmured with a coy tilt to her head and a familiar warmth in her eyes.

Grinning outright now, Steve stood and scooped her up off the couch. He headed for the bedroom, but paused when he realized Bucky hadn’t moved to follow. “Buck? You joining us?”

Coming to a decision, Bucky shook his head. “You go ahead,” he said gruffly, shoving his hands in his pockets just to have something to do with them. “I ain’t in the mood.”

“Are you all right, darling? You’ve been very edgy tonight,” Peggy said, proving that she had indeed been paying attention.

Bucky managed a tiny smile for her, appreciating that she cared enough to check. “I’m fine. Just need some space.” He knew the choppy words would worry her further. He tended to get brusque when he was having trouble inside his head, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Concentrating long enough to keep more complex sentences organized was too difficult right now, and he certainly wasn’t going to manage any teasing.

“Well, you know you’re welcome to join us if you change your mind later,” Steve said. 

Good. They weren’t going to push him. They usually didn’t, but if they got really worried they’d spend time trying to talk him into going to see Wanda, and that wasn’t what he wanted right now. What he _did_ want, he had no fucking clue.

Shrugging a farewell, Bucky made his way out into the hallway. It was empty at the moment, which was helpful. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with other people. Glancing at his own door, he frowned when the thought of going to it was unappealing. Maybe he should hit the training room, work off the tension?

No, that idea left him feeling sour, too. Something specific was aggravating him, one of those fucking indefinable things that nagged at him from his subconscious without bothering to inform him of exactly what the problem _was_. Once he figured it out the issue would seem glaringly obvious, but until then he was left upset and irritated by his inability to function like a God damned normal person.

In a way these periods were even more aggravating than they used to be, because now he was accustomed to being able to think relatively clearly. When his mind turned traitor on him his thoughts would go slippery and opaque, hard to catch and harder to understand. The knowledge that he _should_ have been able to process them without as much trouble was unbelievably fucking frustrating. And of course the more agitated he got about it, the worse the problem would become.

All he could do was sort through the issue with broken logic to match his broken brain. The first thing to try was process of elimination: he didn’t want to be with Steve and Peggy; he didn’t want to be in public; he didn’t want to be alone in his room; he didn’t want to train; he didn’t want to see Wanda...

That thought got him stuck. Growling, Bucky started over again. He wanted to see somebody: not Wanda; not any of the other Avengers; certainly not any random base personnel; obviously not Steve and Peggy; so that left...

Nata. He wanted to see Nata. 

As expected, that should have been fucking obvious from the beginning. Hearing Peggy say her name was what had allowed Bucky to focus on the conversation, after all.

Now he remembered. He’d been trying to corner her for a while, any time it occurred to him to try. The problem was that she was remarkably good at staying uncornerable. She hadn’t been avoiding him, he couldn’t say that at all, but she _had_ been avoiding being alone with him. 

Steve had talked to him about it after the first time the four of them had sex together. Bucky hadn’t believed him in the beginning, so the next time Nata joined them he’d decided to check. Sure enough when he called her ‘Natashen’ka’ she’d flinched. 

He’d stopped using the diminutive forms of her name immediately, sticking to ‘Nata’ after that. He had more than enough landmines in his own head, the last thing he wanted to do was step on someone else’s. Especially hers. 

Not using the names wasn’t enough, though. She shied away from him in bed, using subtle tricks to manipulate the situation so that Bucky would tend to end up focused on Steve or Peggy instead. When she did let him touch her he had to make sure not to use his left hand or she’d flinch again. That really, really sucked because he fucking loved the way she came apart when he did, it was by far his favourite thing to do with her. 

Even with all the care he took to avoid the things she didn’t want, if he was the one who brought her to orgasm at any point, or if she got worked up enough to call him ‘Yasha’ by mistake, she would flee the room the moment the four of them were finished instead of staying for a while to enjoy the afterglow.

He hadn’t even bothered asking to fuck her. It didn’t take an unbroken mind to figure out she wasn’t likely to welcome the idea of his cock inside her if she got that upset just about his fingers. Bucky wasn’t interested in fucking _anyone_ who didn’t want it, but with Nata there was the added danger that she might just carry through on her old promise to gut him for trying.

Things couldn’t keep going this way forever. Bucky couldn’t stand causing her pain, and it was affecting Peggy and Steve as well. It was at the point where he wasn’t sure he even wanted to be there with the three of them, if it was going to hurt her so much. Yet she never hesitated to join them when invited, and sometimes it seemed like she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to touch him and be touched in return, at least until it got too intense.

He _needed_ to talk to her about it.

Steve had said she’d be in her office, buried in paperwork. She was more likely to let him in there than if he went to her in her quarters, and he even had the perfect excuse. Something separate he’d been meaning to talk to her about anyway, something she wouldn’t hesitate to discuss with him.

At some point in the process of figuring out what was bugging him, the white noise had retreated and Bucky was able to think clearly at last. That was good, because trying to confront Nata about the whole mess when he was on the edge struck him as a _really_ bad idea, but this might be his only chance. Apparently this was what had been pushing him over the line in the first place.

Turning, he headed for her office, grimly intent. If it was becoming a big enough issue to potentially set him off, he couldn’t afford to let her wiggle out of it this time. Managing his triggers was now pretty much his most important priority, because it was the only real way he had of ensuring he wouldn’t hurt anyone by accident. He still had frequent nightmares of coming out of a rage only to find someone he loved battered and bloody at his feet, and the worst were the ones that replayed the moment he’d woken to find his knife halfway to Peggy’s heart.

The office areas weren’t empty, though they were quieter than during ‘business’ hours. The base ran 24-7, because bad guys and disasters didn’t tend to stick to a nice, comfortable schedule. Often one of the strike teams could handle an incoming alert, but the Avengers were on call at all times. Bucky had been on a couple of less important missions with the team now and shit it had felt good to be back in the field, doing something he knew was right, standing at Steve’s side where he belonged.

When he reached her door he hesitated, debating the merits of knocking versus charging right in. Knocking meant she might say ‘no’, but charging in would put her immediately on the defensive and that was far from tactically advisable. Reluctantly he punched the button on the panel that would alert her there was someone waiting for her attention.

He could always charge in anyway _after_ she said ‘no’.

The response was immediate, her voice relayed over the comm. “I swear to God if you have _one more_ document for me to look at or sign or process in any way, I will shoot you the moment you step through the door. So think twice.”

The aggravated growl made him snicker under his breath as he hit the control to open the door. Peggy was right, Nata really did detest the paperwork aspect of her job. The laughter was good because it improved his mood, which also further improved his clarity of mind.

“No documents. Promise,” he assured her as he stepped inside. When he closed the door he also told it to lock and indicate she was busy. She could override that, of course, he wasn’t trying to trap her, but he didn’t want to be interrupted.

“Bucky,” she exclaimed, somehow managing to sound both welcoming and wary. “Sorry, I should have looked before I answered, but the techs have been driving me crazy tonight. Where are your better halves?” Pausing, she pondered that sentence with a frown. “Better thirds?”

His lips twitched in a smile, but it faded as he considered the answer to her question and how it related to the reason he was here. “At Steve’s,” he replied, shoving his hands in his pockets again. 

She tipped her head at the chairs in front of her desk in silent invitation, but he shrugged and remained standing. He wouldn’t manage to sit for more than a few minutes at best, as restless as he was feeling. He knew she wouldn’t take offense. Sure enough she stood instead to put them on the same level, perching her hip on the edge of her desk. “Didn’t feel like joining them?”

“Not tonight.” Damn it, he needed to stop with the clipped sentences or she was going to start to worry about him, too. She knew the signs as well as Steve and Peggy. With a determined effort he gathered his thoughts. “There’s something I needed to talk to you about anyway, so when Steve said you’d be here I figured it was a good opportunity.”

The wariness overtook the welcome, and he could see she was planning to make an excuse of some kind, probably protest that she really needed to get the reports done before Steve got mad at her. Bucky ploughed onwards before she could say anything. “I’ve been thinking about asking everybody to call me James. I mean, I’d rather they all just use Barnes but it seems like some people can’t take a fucking hint. I figure if I give them a different first name to use whether I like it or not, at least they won’t be calling me Bucky.”

That was not at all what she’d expected him to say, and as he’d hoped it made her relax and become genuinely engaged in talking to him. “Oh? Why does it bother you so much to have them call you Bucky?”

“Because I’m not Bucky anymore,” he said, and the words came out more heated than he’d meant them to. “I know Steve and Peggy think I’m just Bucky who’s gone through a tonne of shit, but I’m not. I’m fucking rebuilding myself from the ground up, and yeah I’m using a lot of parts of him to do it but I’m not the same person.”

He’d tried to explain this to Steve and Peggy, together and individually, but they only assured him that he was recovering well and in time he’d feel ‘properly like himself’ again. They didn’t realize that he was already ‘himself’. He _had_ recovered from the worst of what HYDRA had done to him, he was a person again and not a weapon, but that person was never going to be the same as he had been before he’d been broken.

As he’d anticipated, Nata nodded and the understanding in her eyes was soul deep. _She_ knew. It hadn’t escaped him that most people here seemed to think Natasha was her actual name instead of just the familiar form of Natalya, and he suspected she’d set it up that way on purpose to put distance between her and the person she’d been before. She alone could comprehend the battle he’d fought and the scars he’d come through it with, because she would have gone through something similar when she’d left the Red Room. 

Well, her and Wanda, because Wanda had been inside his head while he fought it. He’d talked to her about this and she’d agreed it was a good idea, but he wanted Nata’s seal of approval as well.

“It’s not a bad thought,” Nata acknowledged. “I’d have recommended against taking on a completely new identity, because you do need to hold on to as much of that past self as you can to help ground you. But you’ve always been ‘James’, you identify that name with your past as well, so it’s a good choice. If people question the change you won’t even have to explain it. Just say that ‘Bucky’ was a childhood nickname and since you’re not twelve anymore, you figured you’d use your real name.”

Sighing with relief, he nodded. She really did get it, all of it. “Yeah, exactly. I still think of myself as Bucky, and I don’t want that to change. HYDRA stole that from me, and getting it back is one of the most important steps I took. But it feels wrong every time someone else calls me that.”

“Of course, you realize you’re never going to get Steve to use James,” she pointed out with a sympathetic smile. “He’ll try his best, but it’s too ingrained. Peggy may be able to make the switch.”

“I wouldn’t want him to,” Bucky admitted, his voice soft. “Or her. I don’t mind being Bucky to _them_ , that’s who they love and I’m close enough to him to feel like it still means they love me, too. Trying to be him for them has gotten me a long way, and helped me remember a lot. I think it’d be a bad idea to stop.”

“I agree,” she said. “I don’t think you need to make any kind of general announcement. You can tell the team and it will spread from there. You’ll still get the occasional asshole or fangirl using the nickname, but it won’t be as bad. Is it all right for me to call you James, or would you rather I go back to Barnes to encourage other people to do the same?”

This was where it was going to turn sideways on him. At least the closer they came to the real issue, the better he seemed to be able to think. Bucky braced himself for the fallout, and took the plunge. “Actually I was kinda hoping you’d call me Yasha.”

The shock of it hit her with a visible impact, her eyes going wide and her breath catching, but in the next instant she shut it all down so fast it was like watching a door slam closed. If he hadn’t been watching her closely he might have blinked and missed it. Anyone else probably would have.

Unfortunately for her, unlike most people he knew and understood the training she’d been put through. Even if he hadn’t seen the reaction, the carefully neutral expression that remained might as well have been a scream as far as he was concerned. Nata only ever went that blank when what she was hiding was too painful to allow her to fake anything better.

“That’s not a good idea,” she said, and her voice was as damningly dispassionate as her face. “That would do the opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish, dragging you back into memories of your time in HYDRA.”

No mention of the painful memories it would drag _her_ back into, of course. He’d expected that. “I know six months as Yakov ain’t much compared to twenty-eight years as Bucky, but it was long enough to make an impact. I’ve used him to rebuild myself, too. By the end of it I’d recovered enough that he wasn’t just a HYDRA creation anymore, he was me, even if I didn’t really understand who ‘me’ was.”

“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” she said lightly. “It seems like you made progress better and faster back then than you have been now, even with Wanda’s help. You never had the violent outbursts, for one thing. Paranoid reflexive lashing out, yes, but no flashbacks or aggression triggers. Peggy said you were at least this bad during the month she spent trying to help you, so why not in Russia?”

Now she was deflecting, the second line of defense, intended to give her long enough to gather her composure and improve her cover emotions. In a minute she’d be smiling and maybe even flirting, trying to use distraction as a third defense. 

Still, the question was valid and deserved an answer. It was something he’d wondered about himself, before he’d figured out the important difference. “Back then I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. I wasn’t disobeying, just thinking about it. I didn’t have to waste half my energy and focus fighting the need to report back to my handlers.”

“Ah. That makes more sense,” she admitted with a chuckle. The flat neutrality was gone, and anyone looking at her now who hadn’t also seen her a moment ago would have no idea anything was wrong. Fuck, she was good. 

He couldn’t let her get any farther into the process of damage control, because after distraction would come extraction and he’d lose his chance. “If I can be Bucky for them, why can’t I be Yasha for you?” he demanded. “I know you still have feelings for him, for _me_. I still love you, too.”

There it was; the tiny flinch she couldn’t quite bury, the same one that happened if he got too close in bed. He’d found the sore spot. As much as he didn’t want to tread on it, didn’t want to cause her pain, they had to deal with this or it was only going to fester and rot. If that happened the infection could potentially spread to destroy their other relationships as well, and he couldn’t allow that under any circumstances.

When she didn’t answer immediately, probably searching for a quick way out of the whole conversation, he lowered his voice and took a step closer, the next words in Russian. “Is it because I hurt you too much when I left you behind?”

Anger and agony flared in Nata’s eyes, the green turning hard and cold as emeralds. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she replied, the words sharp. 

She’d answered in the same language, probably not even thinking about it, and he saw annoyance cross her face as she realized the slip. She hadn’t meant to allow him the change in territory, even though that territory was _her_ home ground and should therefore technically have been an advantage to her.

Bucky took the bit and ran with it, not giving her the chance to move the discussion back into neutral and less personally intimate English. “Don’t I? I know what I left you to face when they caught me. I promised I would come for you and I broke that promise, intentionally or not. I’m _so_ fucking sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t change anything,” she retorted, apparently giving in on the language issue. “Peggy was your priority in the end, not me. And that’s exactly as it should be, she means more to you than I ever could have.”

He’d gotten her angry instead of just upset, and that was good. She’d retreat from upset, but she’d charge into anger. She wasn’t the only one who knew how to manipulate people. At least, when he _remembered_ how. And the irony was that he’d learned it all from her.

“No, that _isn’t_ as it should be,” he insisted. “Peggy was safe enough, but I risked _your_ safety to check on her and make sure of it before leaving her. I should have gotten you out first, right then and there. You were the one actively in danger. I could have gone back for her later.”

“Because you think that would have ended up with us in a better situation? Let’s say hypothetically that you’d done that, and by some miracle we’d actually managed to get away with it,” Nata said. “Which is damn near impossible and you know it as well as I do now that we’re standing outside the situation, but what the Hell, let’s run with it. Where would that have left us?”

They were close enough that she had to tilt her head back to glare up into his eyes, but it didn’t diminish her furious righteousness in the least. It was the same defiance that had drawn him to her in the first place, the refusal to be intimidated because what she was facing was bigger than she was, either physically or emotionally. She would run, she would hide, she would lie, but she would never break.

“We’d have been utterly without resources or any practical knowledge of how to survive in the world,” she continued, ruthless. “No, let’s go even further and assume we somehow found shelter, food, and a way to sustain ourselves. The moment you felt I was settled and safe enough to risk leaving me you’d have been gone, driven to check on her just like they programmed you to, and they _still_ would have captured you. I’d have been left lost, adrift, and al...”

Her breath caught abruptly, and Bucky frowned. She’d been about to say ‘alone’, hadn’t she? Why did that thought bother her so much more than all the rest? “What?” he asked, and scowled in bewilderment when she shut down all over again, anger buried along with the rest to hide whatever private agony she’d just tripped over.

Whatever this was, it was huge, maybe the real root of the problem. He couldn’t let her drop it now. “What?” he insisted, catching her by the shoulders when she tried to slide out from between him and the desk. “Don’t run away, Natalya. _What?_ ”

“Let me go,” she said, flat and implacable. With a frustrated noise he obeyed and took a small step back, giving her space even though he didn’t want to. Peggy had taught him the hard way that if he turned an argument into a physical fight any chance of actually resolving it would be lost. Trapping her wasn’t the answer, it would only make her defensive.

But knowing that didn’t stop him from wanting to shake her sometimes. Or shake Peggy, for that matter.

The fact that he’d backed off seemed to surprise her. She frowned, studying his eyes and doubtless seeing the aggravation there. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he told her, as flat as she had been. “But I’m not going to let you run, either, not this time.”

Still she watched him, eyes flicking here and there to evaluate the nuances of his expression and body language. He knew he had her rattled if she was being that obvious about checking him out, at least. Usually she was a lot subtler than that.

Apparently he managed to convince her that he wasn’t budging, because she sighed and looked away. Better yet she dropped the neutrality, and he could see how upset she truly was. She shifted her arms like she was going to either cross them or wrap them around herself, but realized how defensive that would look and braced her hands behind her on the desk instead.

When she spoke her voice was hoarse and unsteady. He’d only heard her that way twice before – once when he’d first recognized her here, and once when she’d told him they were graduating her. “When I had my ceremony, the surgery, I was eight days overdue for my period.”

Given the effort and pain the words had cost her to get out, Bucky really didn’t want to have to ask her to elaborate. Unfortunately he had absolutely no idea what that meant. “Uh…”

Glancing up at him, she rolled her eyes. At least the irritation seemed to help steady her. “Men. I suppose you have more excuse than most. Do you even know what a period is?”

Flushing, he nodded. “Peggy gets bitchy and doesn’t want to have sex for a week every month. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Because missing it means…” Nata’s voice broke, and the momentary stability granted by her annoyance was gone like it had never been. She had to take a couple of deliberate breaths before she could continue, and wasn’t meeting his eyes again. “It _could_ mean that I was… was pregnant at the time.”

If she’d jammed her Widow’s Sting into his heart and turned it on full blast, she couldn’t have stunned him any more. Bucky gaped at her, his mind spinning. Pregnant? She’d never let him fuck her because she was worried about that, he remembered. Except the one time, the first time it had been mutual, when she’d said it would be okay. 

Apparently it hadn’t been okay. Or what the Hell did he know, maybe it didn’t have anything to do with him. He swallowed hard. “Was it mine?”

That earned him such a nasty glare he had to fight the urge to block her from going for one of his knives. She probably had her own tucked away somewhere anyway. “How dare you…”

“I know I was the only one you _wanted_ to be with, Nata,” he interrupted to protest. He’d slipped back into English without realizing it at first, too deeply in shock to manage anything else. “But I don’t know what they did to you in training, you never talked about those classes. It coulda been from that, I didn’t wanna assume.”

The glare softened. “Good save,” she acknowledged, her voice rough. “Yes, it was… _would have been_ yours, if it was real at all. It could have been nothing. Stress, too much exercise, my diet being off, anything. It does happen, and it was only a week.”

“But you don’t believe that.” If she did, the topic wouldn’t distress her so fucking much. 

“I have to believe that,” she corrected him, and her desperate denial came through in every word.

Bucky considered the whole thing for a moment, his heart pounding and throat tight. Small wonder she wanted nothing to do with him, if being near him reminded her of _that_. He was surprised she was willing to even live in the same base. Her voice, her expression, her body language, even the denial itself told him the subject was agony for her. 

“I abandoned you both,” he realized, heartbroken at the thought. Bad enough that he’d destroyed her faith in love. Never mind that she was right and they wouldn’t have survived the attempt. It was so much worse to know it hadn’t just been her that he’d failed.

“It could have been nothing,” she repeated, sounding like a broken record. “At least now I know you didn’t just decide it was too much risk to come back for me after all.”

“Shit.” It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might believe that, but how could she have thought anything else? He’d vanished, after promising to come for her. And also after revealing that he’d already been plotting for weeks to escape, with no intention of taking her along until that moment. Of course she would wonder if he’d changed his mind and chosen to go without her. “Nata…”

“If you apologize again I’m going to hit you,” she informed him. “It wasn’t your fault. You’d have come for me if you could have.”

“You know, people keep telling me that,” he snapped, the too-familiar phrase feeling like alcohol poured over the wound caused by the revelation. “That none of it is my fault, that the blame is on HYDRA. But hearing it never makes me feel any less like I killed those people or did those things. _I_ failed you, not HYDRA.”

She gave him a twisted half-smile, and he knew she understood this, too. Of course she did. Steve had mentioned that Nata’s kill count was far higher than his, and involved more civilians and innocents. She’d been exactly what the Red Room had created her to be, because she hadn’t known there was any other choice. Once she _did_ know she’d changed her ways, but nothing could ever erase the existence of those past actions. 

“It’s best that it happened this way, you know it is,” she told him. “This is the only way we both could have ended up here, now. Here and now is a pretty damn good place to be, all things considered.”

“It would be better if you’d stop flinching every time I touch you,” he replied bluntly. “I love you, Natashulya, it’s killing me that I’m hurting you just by being here.”

Sure enough the pain sparked in her eyes. This time she didn’t bury it, letting him see the full impact of his words, and it hurt him just as much as her. Why was he always causing pain to the women he loved? HYDRA had tortured Peggy to punish him, and now Nata had suffered all this time because of him too.

“You’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. “That Natalya is as gone as Yakov is.”

“You think I don’t know who you are, now?” he countered. “You think I haven’t been paying attention over the last months, learning who you’ve become? I knew back then that you could be so much more than what the Red Room wanted to make of you, and I didn’t even realize the half of it. You grew up to be a fucking amazing woman, you put your past self to shame.”

He’d surprised her, and she didn’t seem to know how to answer him. That was fine, because now that he’d started he couldn’t stop the words from coming, spilling straight out of his heart without passing through his brain first. “More than that, you’re the only one who _gets_ me. I don’t have to explain things to you like why I don’t think I’m Bucky any more, or why it fucking pisses me off when people tell me not to feel guilty. Steve and Peggy can’t understand those things, not really, and I wouldn’t want them to be able to. But I need that, I need someone I don’t have to pretend with, someone who will let me just be who I really am and not judge me for it if I’m not the good, bright, shiny person they want me to be. Don’t you ever want that?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted, biting her lip and watching him like she suspected it was a trap. “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to spend a lot of time being reminded that I’m not really a hero.”

“You are a hero. We both are, now,” he insisted. “Maybe more than the others, because we know exactly what the other option is and we made a fucking decision to cross the line to the right side. I just hate having to act like I’ve _always_ been one, because I wasn’t and that’s a part of me, too.”

“You sound like Steve,” she said, and her voice had gone rough again. She blinked a couple of times, though he didn’t actually catch the gleam of tears in her eyes. “He claims he trusts me to do the right thing because I haven’t always and I made a conscious choice to change.”

“Being compared to Steve is a pretty fucking high compliment. Especially since it sounds like he’s right.” Slowly he reached out to cup her cheek, the same gesture she’d rejected from him once before. This time instead of pulling away or stopping him, she closed her eyes and let him make the contact. 

Better yet, she allowed him to wrap his other arm around her and tug her close, until she was pressed against his chest with her head on his shoulder. They both stood there for a minute, adjusting to the familiar-unfamiliar feel of each other and slowly relaxing as their mutual paranoia accepted that the touch wasn’t a potential threat.

Yet another thing Steve and Peggy would never understand, not really. Steve had a reflexive defensive reaction to being startled just like Bucky, but if he chose to let someone into his personal space then he’d already made the decision to accept that closeness and didn’t have to force himself to relax. They got that it was sometimes a problem for him and made accommodations, and presumably Steve did the same for Nata, but that wasn’t the same as understanding.

“I love you,” he whispered into her hair. “ _I_ love _you_ , as I am now and as you are now. Maybe I wouldn’t if I didn’t have the memory of back then to draw me to you, but does that matter?”

“Do Steve and Peggy even know you’re here?” Nata asked, still sounding wary. “Have you checked this over with Peggy? Do you know Steve’s okay with it?”

“They know how I feel about you,” he answered, his heart lifting so fast it made him giddy. If she was asking whether the others were okay with the idea of him and Nata, it meant she was considering that idea. “How is me being with you any different from Steve being with Peggy?”

“You can’t make assumptions like that,” she told him, but her arms were creeping around his waist and she wasn’t hiding her face in his shoulder now so much as nuzzling it. He could feel her heartbeat picking up, hear the change in her breathing, and he knew the closeness, the memories, and the emotional rawness they both felt were affecting her the same way as him.

“They know I’ve always been more likely to ask forgiveness than permission,” he said, and tilted her chin up for a kiss.

They had kissed before as part of the group, but not often. This was entirely different, focused and passionate and full of longing on both sides. She was still perched against the edge of the desk, but Bucky picked her up and deposited her fully on it, not caring that he knocked a tray of data files askew in the process. 

It had been so long, too long, and he’d wanted her since he’d realized she really was his Natashen’ka. The halfway contact with Steve and Peggy between them was an unfulfilling tease, accomplishing nothing except driving him mad for her.

Bucky knew he should be taking it slow, being gentle, but those options did not appear to be on the table right now. Or on the desk, for that matter. He caught her hips in a tight grip and yanked her against him, grinding his hardening cock against her cunt and growling into her mouth.

Not that she was objecting. She had her hands under his shirt and her nails dug into his back the way she knew he liked, the sharp sting helping to ground him and keep him centered only on her, endorphins and adrenalin pumping through him in response and enhancing every touch.

Peggy was rarely rough with him, and he had to be so fucking careful not to ever hurt her too much. Steve could be, sometimes, since both of them appreciated that they didn’t have to hold back with each other, but it wasn't really intentional.

Nata was the only one who’d ever seemed to understand how much he got out of deliberate roughness, and fuck he’d missed that so much. He still had to be careful with her, but she’d never been careful with him and he loved her for that as much as anything.

Breaking the kiss, he started to push her over onto the desk but there was too much in the way. Electronic files and scattered data pads and a dozen other things, all of them probably important but right now he really didn’t give a shit. With an impatient noise he swept his arm across the surface and knocked it all to the ground. He’d help her clean it up later, if she insisted. 

She was tugging at the hem of his shirt, so he yanked it over his head before leaning over her. When he went to pull her shirt off in turn, however, he quickly ran into a problem. It was form-fitted to her body, which was great to look at but not so great for getting rid of. It didn’t seem to be stretchy so presumably there were fastenings of some kind up the back, but Bucky had no patience for that kind of bullshit right now.

Catching the fabric in both hands, he pulled sharply in opposite directions and the whole thing ripped apart up the front. “Hey! That was an expensive shirt. How am I supposed to get back to my quarters?” she complained.

“I’ll buy you another one, and you can wear mine,” Bucky replied, unrepentant. He reached for her bra, and she quickly did something to unfasten it at the front before he could get a grip on it, too. 

Satisfied for the moment, Bucky pushed the two halves aside and cupped one breast in his left hand. She shivered at the feel of the cool metal, and he leaned over to lick and nip at the peak of her nipple. That made her arch against him, one hand clutching tight in his hair and the other tweaking his nipple in turn. 

With one last bite and soothing lick, Bucky shifted his hand up to cover the soft mound and moved his right hand to cover the other one. She’d always liked the contrast of having both his hands on her at the same time, and judging by her moan that hadn’t changed. 

Moving up her body, he settled himself into the cradle of her thighs once more. It felt good even though they both still had jeans on, and she rocked into him with little circular motions he knew were meant to drive him crazy. Sometimes it seemed like she’d lived to tease him, back then, pushing at the limits of his self-control just to see how far she could go. He’d never snapped, had managed to always respect her ‘don’t’ not to fuck her, but it had been a damned close call on more than one occasion.

Often he’d found himself wondering if it was his control she was really testing, or her own. Or maybe she’d been hoping she’d push him too far so she could have what she’d so clearly wanted while being able to blame him for the slip. 

Knowing now that all their agonized restraint had been futile, too little too late, was its own special kind of Hell in more than one way. 

Closing his teeth over her earlobe, he tugged hard, before running his tongue up over the delicate shell of her ear. He wondered if Steve had discovered how sensitive she was there, the way it made her whimper and toss her head to try to get away while at the same time arching against him to try to get closer. Maybe there were a few tricks he could teach his best friend about their girl. Or maybe there were some Steve could teach him. 

Either way, the next time they were all together was going to be a lot of fun.

“Natashulya,” he murmured into her ear, and waited breathlessly to see if she would flinch.

She did shudder, and for a horrible moment he thought he’d made a mistake. But though her voice was choked when she answered him, what she said was everything he could want. 

“Yashen’ka.”

So much for his vaunted control. That one word shattered him to pieces in the best way, and he ground his hips against hers as his cock jumped in response to the broken need in her voice. Groaning, he dropped his hands to her waistband, desperate to feel her against him properly.

“Don’t rip them,” she scolded him, pulling at his hair hard enough to draw a wince from him. “I can’t wear your pants out, too!”

“The shirt would be long enough on you to cover everything important,” he replied. The thought of her wearing nothing but his shirt, marked as _his_ for all the world to see instead of being forced to hide his love for her away in the darkness of the night, was so fucking tempting he decided it was worth risking her ire. 

She kneed him in the kidney with enough impact to make him swear, but it was already too late for the pants. “Oh my God, Yashka, seriously?” she demanded, but lifted her hips with a sigh so he could pull the ruined denim off her. Even the derogatory name wasn’t enough to dampen his spirits with that mental image still firmly in his mind.

The image of her naked and sprawled out over the desk wasn’t bad, either. He’d caught her panties with the jeans without meaning to, or else she hadn’t been wearing any to start with, so she was now enticingly bare to his gaze. 

And to his touch. He ran his hands appreciatively over her from shoulders to knees and back again, revelling in the soft satin feel of her skin beneath his callused fingers. She was beautiful, pale skin and flaming hair highlighted by the shiny black surface beneath her. It made him wish he could draw like Steve so he could capture the picture forever. A camera would have worked, too, but he didn’t have one handy.

Maybe he’d just have to recreate it later when he did have one. 

Starting a second pass that ran considerably closer to the centre of her body rather than the outsides, Bucky watched her expression closely for any sign that she wouldn’t welcome the touch. She trembled as his hands approached her cunt, but the way she reached up to cup her own breasts and pinch the nipples suggested the reaction was far from a bad one.

Bracing his palms against her mound, he slipped his thumbs into her slick folds and found her clit. Nata cried out and shuddered again, hips jerking into his touch to drive herself against him. He pressed down and let her set her own rhythm, watching in fascination as a delicate flush spread over her features and all the way down to her breasts. 

When she was gasping and moaning with every motion, he smirked and drew back, planting his hands on her hips instead to force her to be still. “Yasha!” she shouted, outraged and frustrated. 

“But you liked it so much that first time,” he said with his best innocent expression, the one that was one hundred percent pure early Bucky.

“No I fucking didn’t,” she snapped, and lunged up from the desk to drag him into a fierce kiss. Though her irritation was clear in the way she bit hard at his lips and clawed at his chest, he knew if she’d truly been angry about it he would have been bleeding, not just scratched. 

Undoing his belt and fly, he got his jeans and boxers down around his thighs but didn’t make it any farther before she was the one catching his hips and pulling him closer. She was still trembling, riding the not-quite-high of the denied orgasm, and he thought if he pushed into her hard and fast enough she might yet come for him.

Despite that tempting thought he paused with the head of his cock just nudging her entrance, ignoring the way she cursed and bit him hard enough to draw the threatened blood this time. Pulling back just enough to be able to see her properly, he raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t? Or please?”

He saw the objections and snappy retorts pile up behind her eyes, saw the way her first instinct was to brush it off or rib him about it like it was a joke. But none of that made it past her lips, and her expression went soft and needy as she reached up to frame his face with her hands. “Please,” she answered, husky and sincere.

That was all he needed, and he slammed home into her. She cried out, dropping her grip to his shoulders so she could drive her nails in again and use them to urge him on.

The desk rocked beneath her with the force of his thrusts, and he barely managed to hang on to enough control to keep from hurting her. She was screaming each time he plunged inside her, short little gasping cries that drove him to new heights of need. It didn’t matter that she’d started to come down from the previous high, because he pushed her relentlessly right back up and over that peak. 

Bucky could have held off longer, made her go through it all again, but he didn’t want to. With a shout of his own he came hard, driving into her one last time and staying there as he pulsed with the release of his seed. 

Shivering with stimulation overload, Nata clutched at him like he was an anchor and she’d be adrift at sea forever if she lost hold. He slid his arms under her and lifted her up so he could hold her too, cradling her tight against his chest. She turned her head to rest her cheek against his heart, and he heard her ragged breathing slowly even out.

“Steve and Peggy had damned well better be okay with this, or we are both in so much shit,” she murmured at last, tracing absent patterns over his back with her fingers.

“They’ll be okay,” Bucky asserted, certain of that much. He probably _should_ have checked first, but he knew they wouldn’t begrudge him. Hell, with the worried way Steve had been watching the two of them, he’d probably throw them a party. 

And Peggy… she was the literal light in his life, the thing that kept him going through the bad days and worst nightmares. And that was amazing, but he knew it was also a huge fucking burden on her sometimes. She wouldn’t object to him having a second source of support. Well, third source. Steve was the second. Three was supposed to be the magic number for stability, right?

Though that did bring up a different issue. He loved Nata, but he couldn’t add ‘with all his heart’ onto that, because it would be a lie. Peggy already had hold of the biggest chunk of it, and Steve as well. How the fuck was he supposed to tell Nata that without making it sound like he didn’t value her as much, or didn’t really love her?

“Natashulya…” Bucky hesitated, frustrated with his inability to come up with the right words. He couldn’t even blame his broken brain for this problem, because he was still thinking as clearly as he ever did. 

‘I love you, but,’ didn’t seem like the right way to say it. Neither did ‘She’s my first priority, but,’. Really it was the ‘but’ that was the problem. How the fuck did he get around it?

She must have read his confusion and distress in the tension of his body, because she tipped her head to look up at him with a wry smile. “I love you, too,” she admitted, as close to ‘shy’ as she ever got. “It’ll be nice not to have to try to avoid you when we’re all together.”

Shit, she’d actually managed to do it without the ‘but’. Bucky was impressed, but that was Nata all over. By reinforcing the idea that the only time she expected to be with him was when they were all together, she’d also subtly confirmed that they remained secondary to each other compared to their partners. She’d even managed to slip in an affirmation that it didn’t mean they loved each other any less.

“Maybe once in a while on our own?” he suggested. “Sometimes I give Steve a chance to just be with Peggy, but it’s not always ‘cause I want to be alone.” And by definition, if Steve was with Peggy it meant Nata was alone, too.

“Yeah,” she agreed, tugging him down for a brief, sweet kiss. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

There was a shadow remaining in her eyes when she looked at him, but lancing the agony had begun the process of turning a fresh, bleeding wound into the memory of one. Just like the rest of their pasts, the darkness would never be erased, but it could be overcome.

Gently Bucky withdrew from her. He was still hard, but he didn’t really mind this time. The once had been so emotionally powerful, a second time would just seem... well, anti-climactic. Right now he had a different priority.

“Will you come with me and stay the night?” he asked, not even trying to hide his very genuine longing. “We never did get to sleep together. Sometimes I can manage the whole night without leaving, now, and I know you sleep with Steve.”

Tilting her head to the side, she looked coyly up at him through her lashes. “I think I can manage that. Getting up there is going to be a challenge, though. Really? Did you _really_ have to destroy the pants too?”

“I got enough of having to tiptoe around and pretend I didn’t love you in the Red Room,” he declared. “This time I want everyone to know how I fucking feel.”

“So you decided to parade around the complex with me in your shirt and you sporting obvious claw marks.” Nata sighed like she was exasperated, but there was a smile on her lips. “What the Hell, we’re overdue for another episode of the soap opera. Might as well give ‘em a good one.”

While he fixed his pants she pulled his T-shirt on, and it looked so good on her that Bucky had to stand there and appreciate the sight for a moment. The soft fabric draped over her curves, emphasizing the swell of her breasts. The v-neck was too deep, showing just a hint of cleavage, and the hemline fell at a length that could only be considered decent by stretching either the definition or the fabric quite a bit. She hadn’t bothered to put the bra back on, and she’d even ditched her shoes to complete the effect she knew he was going for.

Smiling provocatively, she struck a pose that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any of the pin-up photos the guys in the trenches had traded around. He smirked back at her and scooped her up, making her laugh even as she smacked his shoulder in protest. “I can walk,” she objected.

“I know you can,” he assured her as he headed for the door. “This makes the point better.”

They drew quite a number of astonished or amused looks as he carried her up to the personnel area, but only a few were stupid enough to leer or point and laugh. Bucky turned his best psychotic assassin glare on the suicidal ones, and they all gulped and fled from his line of sight.

Nata had her face hidden against his neck, but it wasn’t because she was embarrassed; he could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. He would never have pulled a stunt like this with Peggy, but he already knew not much could faze his Russian diamond. A little display of public indecency was hardly going to manage it. They could have been naked and she probably still wouldn’t have cared much.

Bucky had an ulterior motive for carrying her - it meant she had no control over which door they ended up going to. She stiffened when he stopped in front of Steve’s door instead of continuing to his own, but couldn’t do much besides poke him and protest. “Hey! We shouldn’t interrupt them.”

Pausing, Bucky cocked his head and listened. “They’re not doing anything now,” he said, brushing his hand over the panel. It let him in without protest, since Steve had programmed it to allow both Bucky and Peggy access a while ago.

“You can’t possibly hear anything through the soundproofing in the walls,” Nata objected, lowering her voice to a whisper as he stepped inside.

“The walls? No,” Bucky agreed, not bothering to keep his voice down. “The door, yes. Can’t hear anything between his quarters and mine, but I can from the hall.”

“Which means Steve can, too,” Nata murmured, rolling her eyes. “Good thing I don’t mind being an exhibitionist, but you might not want to mention it to Peggy.”

“Bucky?” the woman in question called from the bedroom, probably hearing his voice. “Did you decide to join us after all?”

“Yeah,” Bucky replied, heading in that direction. “Had to pick something up, first.”

“Natasha?” Steve exclaimed as Bucky came into sight in the doorway, staring at their attire. Or rather, at the lack of it. He blinked at both of them and shook his head like he was trying to wake from what he suspected was a very strange dream. “Uh... okay then. Sure. Did you finish those reports?”

“Fuck the reports, Stevie,” Bucky said, impatient with his friend’s idiocy. “This is more important. Scoot over, both of you.”

Steve and Peggy had been lying in the middle of the bed, wrapped around each other as they slept. Exchanging bemused glances, they did as ordered, shifting to one side of the mattress so that Steve was on the outside edge. Bucky placed Nata down beside Peggy, and jerked his head at her to indicate she should finish stripping while he removed his jeans and boots.

“I thought you couldn’t sleep around so many other people?” Peggy asked her uncertainly.

Nata heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Did you somehow get the impression that I have any control over this situation?”

“Please tell me you two didn’t come all the way up from your office looking like that,” Steve nearly begged, his voice strangled.

“I could, but I thought you didn’t like it when I lie to you?” Nata replied, and Steve groaned and buried his face in the pillow to hide his blush. Peggy was pink-cheeked as well, but Bucky could see the laughter in her eyes.

“It’s like herding cats to get you three where you fucking belong,” he complained as he slid into the bed next to Nata and pulled the covers up over them. He settled in with his arm around her waist, keeping her tucked up snug against him and also allowing him to cover one of Peggy’s hands with his. 

“Is this where we belong?” Nata asked with a hint of wicked amusement. She clearly thought he meant for sexual purposes, but that wasn’t what Bucky cared about at all. Well, not at the moment.

“ _Yes_ ,” Bucky told her firmly. “Together, where I can watch over all of you. Maybe I can actually fucking relax for a change instead of worrying about whichever of you is out of sight or who’s unhappy and alone now.” 

He couldn’t see Nata’s expression from this angle, but although she sighed again, she also shifted so she was curled just that little bit tighter against him. Peggy’s eyes were soft and full of love as she turned her hand over in his to squeeze it. Steve met his gaze, and nodded slowly with a small, satisfied smile. _He_ understood.

They were happy, and they were together, and in the end that was all that really mattered. Bucky knew it couldn’t stay perfect like this forever, or even for very long, but he intended to enjoy every second while he had it. And then he’d make sure to have it again as soon as possible, even if it did mean wrangling the three of them like unruly children sometimes.

They were his. They were _his_ and Bucky would protect them and their happiness if it cost him his life. He’d failed Steve when he allowed HYDRA to turn him into their weapon, he’d failed Peggy when he hadn’t been able to keep her safe for so many years, and he’d failed Nata when he left her behind to suffer alone. He was determined never to fail again. 

But it was a lot fucking easier if they were all where they belonged, by his side.


End file.
